


And Then He Kissed Me

by Brumeier



Category: The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn Kenny
Genre: Closeted Character, F/M, First Dance, First Kiss, Friendship, High School, M/M, Mutual Pining, Prompt Fill, School Dances, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Mart didn't want to go to the Spring Fling, but Diana insisted. Lucky thing, too, since it ended up turning into the best night of his life.





	And Then He Kissed Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spikedluv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spikedluv/gifts).



> Written for the smallfandomfest prompt: Trixie Belden Mysteries, Mart/Dan, One night in high school…

“Groovy!” Diana gushed as she and Mart walked into the school gym.

“Wrong decade, Ms. Lynch. I believe the term you’re looking for is ‘boss’.”

Everyone was decked out in 1950s garb. The gym was a sea of saddle shoes, poodle skirts, sweater sets, blazers, rolled jeans, and pompadours. Mart himself was wearing his dad’s old letter jacket and a pair of shiny black shoes with his denim jeans.

He didn’t know whose idea it had been to throw a Sock Hop for the Spring Fling, but it was pretty cheesy. There was even a live band instead of a DJ, and Mart could only assume all the music would be similar to what they were singing right then.

_Yeah I should have known it from the very start_  
_This girl will leave me with a broken heart_  
_Now listen people what I'm telling you_  
_Keep away from a Runaround Sue_

“How long do we need to stay?” Mart asked.

Di gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to go. You might try and have some fun, you know. It wouldn’t kill you.”

She waved at someone in the crowd and then she was gone in a flash of purple polka dots. 

Mart made his way over to the snack table for some punch and a couple of cookies. He’d never been much of a school dance guy. Too much pressure, even with Di on his arm.

“Lookin’ good, Belden!” Carl Milner clapped Mart on the back hard enough that he almost spilled his punch.

If Carl was trying to emulate a fifties hood, he missed by a far mark. His hair was more Flight of Seagulls than anything else. Carl was on the baseball team with Mart.

“Where’s your girl?”

“She’s around. You flying solo again?”

“Only temporarily, man!” Carl gave him a sloppy salute and made a beeline for a clutch of girls that were standing by the stage, swaying to the music without actually dancing.

Mart would’ve been content to stay on the sidelines himself, but then Trixie was tugging him out on the dance floor. Her curly blonde hair was already falling out of whatever retro hairstyle Moms had tried to wrangle it into.

“Come on, Mart! Dance with us!”

 _Us_ was her date and Mart's classmate and friend, Jim, and Jim’s sister Honey. The three had come to the dance together, since Honey was newly single and Trixie would never leave her best friend behind even to spend time with her boyfriend. Both girls had matching, mirror-image poodle skirts on, which they’d sewn themselves.

“Jeez, look at you,” Mart said, laughing at Jim.

Jim looked down at himself. “You have something against a cardigan?”

“I have something against you wearing one. You look like my grandfather.”

“He must be one handsome devil,” Jim said with a grin.

“You look good, Mart,” Honey said. “Where’d you get the jacket?”

“It belongs to my _pater familias_. He was the big man on campus back in his salad days.”

Trixie gave him a little push. “Less talking, more dancing.”

Mart gave a pointed look at the saddle shoes she was wearing. “You know, they call it a Sock Hop because you weren’t supposed to wear shoes. They were afraid of the nice varnished floors getting scuffed up.”

“Nerd,” Trixie replied. But she gamely kicked off her shoes.

_Well, you can swing it you can groove it_  
_You can really start to move it at the hop_  
_Where the jockey is the smoothest_  
_And the music is the coolest at the hop_  
_All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop_

Trixie and Honey tried to out-Twist each other, laughing all the while, while Mart tried to show Jim how to do the Mashed Potato. The Belden parents knew all the old dances and have given Mart and Trixie some lessons.

“You look ridiculous!” Trixie giggled. “I can’t believe people really danced like this!”

Jim grabbed her hand and gave her a twirl. “I don’t know. You look pretty swell to me.”

Mart and Honey both rolled their eyes when Jim stole a kiss. Mart’s sister could be pretty unbearable when she and Jim were together doing their lovey-dovey thing.

The next thing Mart knew, a slow song came on and Di was back to dance with him. He lost track of Honey, but Trixie and Jim were swaying together nearby.

“Did my eyes deceive me or were you having fun?” she asked Mart. Despite her best efforts he could smell a little marijuana on her.

He shrugged. “Maybe a little. How about you?”

Di dropped a wink. “Oh, you know me. I make my own fun wherever I go.”

Mart snorted. “I daresay you do, Queen Dee.”

_Where the boys are_  
_My true love will be,_  
_He's walking down some street in town_  
_And I know he's looking there for me_

“Ooh,” Di said. “Hottie at ten o’clock!”

Mart turned and almost swallowed his tongue. Dan had just come through the gym doors, and he’d succeeded brilliantly where Carl had failed. White t-shirt, black jeans, black leather jacket, and engineer boots. The whole ensemble was capped off with Dan’s dark hair slicked back in an Elvis-style pompadour that shone under the lights.

“Made you look,” Di laughed.

Mart was still looking, though he tried to be unobtrusive about it. Dan Mangan was easily the hottest guy at school, and it was still a little unbelievable that he was one of Mart’s friends. A member of the Bob-White’s, in fact, despite his rather ignominious first appearance in Sleepyside.

“What’s he supposed to be? A T-Bird?”

“James Dean. Just picture the motorcycle.”

Oh, Mart could picture it all too well. It was hard enough pretending he wasn’t attracted to other guys, but Dan made it almost impossible. From the day he’d shown up at school, still wearing his old gang jacket and a ten-pound chip on his shoulder, Mart had been hooked. Maybe it was the bad boy thing, but even once Dan revealed himself to be a genuinely nice guy, the crush continued.

Mart was certain Dan’s ensemble would be featuring in many of his future fantasies.

“You should put the moves on him,” Di said. “Looking like that, who would blame you?”

Mart gave her a sour look. “Do I have to explain to you again what ‘in the closet’ means?”

She was the only one who knew Mart was gay, though Trixie probably suspected. They had an arrangement whereby Di pretended to be Mart’s girl and he let Mr. Lynch think his daughter was a shining paragon of virtue.

“Don’t you want to be happy?” Di asked, and for once she wasn’t teasing.

Mart pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m plenty happy. Don’t meddle.”

The slow song ended and Di drifted away again. Mart found a shadowy corner to lurk in and watch Dan, who made the rounds talking to people and getting a lot of obvious admiration for his outfit. He was popular at school, mostly without trying. Dan just had the kind of magnetism that drew people to him.

It had barely caused a ripple in the social circles of Sleepyside High when people found out Dan was gay. He’d never made a secret of it, never pretended to be anything other than who he was. Mart maybe hated him a little for that.

“Mart? What are you doing hiding over here?” 

Honey had found him.

“Just taking a break.”

“When the next slow song comes on, will you dance with me? Kenny keeps asking, but…”

“The excessive sweating,” Mart said. “Of course I will.”

It wasn’t Kenny’s fault he had hyperhidrosis, but it was a bit of a turn-off for the girls. At least he was putting himself out there, which made him less of a chicken than Mart and his normally-functioning sweat glands.

When Honey went to talk to some friends, Trixie filled her spot. 

“Hey, almost twin. Are you hiding from Diana?”

“Maybe I’m hiding from you,” Mart replied. He dismayed of ever getting Trixie to stop with the ‘almost twin’ thing. They were eleven months apart, there was no ‘almost’ involved.

“Pointless, since I have Belden radar.” Even standing against the wall, Trixie couldn’t stop moving her feet. She still had her shoes off. “Everything okay?”

_One day I feel so happy, next day I feel so sad._  
_I guess I'll learn to take the good with the bad._  
_Cause each night I ask the stars up above,_  
_Why must I be a teenager in love?_

“Peachy keen, jellybean.”

“Dork.”

“Takes one to know one,” Mart replied with a grin.

“How are you the smart one?” Trixie lamented. “Come on. Let’s get our picture taken.”

She dragged him over to the other side of the gym, where a photo booth had been set up. They pulled faces and gave each other bunny ears, and Trixie giggled when the machine spit out the photo strip.

“At least I got the looks in the family,” she said.

“You keep telling yourself that.”

Everyone seemed to be conspiring against Mart, pulling him out on the dance floor every time he tried to slink off on his own. He slow-danced with Honey, Di, and Gina Paterno, and Di insisted he do the Stroll with her, which was a slow dance-slash-walk between two rows of their fellow students. Fifties dances were weird.

When the chance came to slip out and get some fresh air, Mart jumped at it. He grabbed another cup of punch and wandered up the main hallway. There were already posters everywhere stumping for prom court, and that would be another fancy dance Mart would be expected to attend.

Honey’s face was on a lot of the posters, and Mart figured she was pretty much a shoo-in for prom princess.

Mart walked past the trophy case, barely sparing a glance for the championship trophy his team had won last year (and was poised to win again). He’d be graduating in a couple of months, which seemed so strange; like it had taken him forever to get there and at the same time had come in the blink of an eye.

He was eager to see what the world outside of Sleepyside held in store for him. Eager to see who he could be on his own, without his family and his friends defining him. And scared of it, too.

There was a couple making out by the lockers, so Mart diverted down the hallway that led to the computer lab. Unlike the main hall, the lights were off and the farther down he went the darker it got.

He paused by a display case mounted on the wall. He leaned close, nose almost pressed against the glass so he could see the contents in the dim lighting. Like he didn’t know what was in it.

 _Charity Begins With You_ was spelled out in construction paper letters at the top of the display. There were newspaper articles documenting some of the work the Bob-White’s had done, both for the local community and for kids in other countries, and a plaque from Sleepyside High thanking the Bob-White’s for the generous donation they’d made to help update the computer lab. 

The reflection of another face appeared in the glass beside Mart’s and he jerked back in surprise, narrowly avoiding spilling punch on his dad’s jacket. Dan grinned at him, unrepentant.

“Jeez. Give a guy a heart attack.” Being startled wasn’t the reason Mart’s heart was pounding so hard. Why did Dan always smell so good?

“Why are you skulking around down here?” Dan asked. He leaned against the wall, looking every inch the disreputable bad boy.

“Needed some air,” Mart replied, trying to look just as casual. “I think Trixie’s trying to dance me to death.”

“She’s got some good moves. Better than you.”

“Oh, really? The throngs of willing female dance partners seem to suggest otherwise.”

Dan snorted. “Throngs?”

Mart just shrugged. He always felt weird when he bragged about being a ladies’ man, when the exact opposite was true. He told himself things would be different once he left Sleepyside, once he was away from his conservative parents and their conservative friends. Soon he could stop lying about himself.

Dan nodded his head at the display case. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Thinking about other kids taking over?”

The Bob-Whites had been a pretty exclusive club over the years, just their tight-knit group which had expanded only twice, to accommodate Di and then Dan. At their last meeting Trixie had said she’d be spending the next year recruiting new members to take it over when she and Honey graduated. 

“Hopefully the new kids won’t get into so much trouble,” Mart said with a grin.

“Without Trixie finding mysteries around every corner they should be fine.”

Dan was grinning too, but there was a wistful tone to his voice. Mart knew how he felt. He’d given his sister a lot of grief over the years about her propensity for finding trouble, but some of those adventures had been pretty exciting.

No-one told Mart he’d feel so conflicted about moving on to the next stage of his life.

“We should probably head back,” Mart said reluctantly. “The girls will send out a search party.”

“Probably,” Dan agreed, but he didn’t move. “You have any regrets? Stuff you wanted to do before you graduated?”

 _You_ , Mart thought immediately, and was glad the shadows hid the blush of embarrassment on his face. He hastily finished his punch. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Maybe.” Dan pushed up off the wall, but instead of heading back to the gym he moved into Mart’s personal space. “Maybe there’s one I have time to fix.”

Mart’s skin flushed hot and for a moment he thought he might pass out, until he remembered to breathe. “And what would that be?” he asked, glad his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt.

“You ever kissed a boy?” Dan asked softly.

Mart shook his head, eyes wide.

“You ever wanted to?”

Mart weighed his options, thoughts running a mile a minute. He could say no and they could go back to just being friends and Mart could continue to wonder what might have been. Or he could say yes and possibly throw his whole life in turmoil, but at least he’d be a man who wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

He licked his lips, which suddenly seemed incredibly dry. “Yes.”

Dan leaned in even closer. “Martin Belden, I’d sure like to kiss you.”

Mart’s heart was pounding in his chest and he was trying really hard not to hyperventilate. “I’d like that too,” he whispered.

Even in the shadowed hallway, Mart could see the soft expression on Dan’s face. He looked…shy. Maybe a little nervous. Nothing like the confident, popular guy he was most of the time.

Dan put one hand on Mart’s shoulder, and with the other he gently cupped the side of Mart’s face, pulling him that last little bit. Mart closed his eyes. The first touch of Dan’s lips on his was like an electric buzz that rolled down his whole body. He’d fantasized about just such a moment so many times, but the reality beat out anything his imagination could come up with.

Mart didn’t know what to do with his hands at first, plastic cup long since abandoned, but then he found himself gripping Dan’s hips, his fingers just brushing over the back of Dan’s jeans. And then he lost track of everything, even his own name, when he opened his mouth and the chaste kiss turned into something much better.

He made an embarrassing noise, something between a moan and a whimper, and he could feel Dan’s lips curve into a smile even as they kept kissing. Mart and Di had done a little kissing, just for experimentation purposes, but it was nothing like kissing Dan.

Dan pulled back first and rested his forehead against Mart’s, breath coming in short pants. “Shit.”

Mart froze. Had he done it wrong? “What?”

“I should never have kissed you,” Dan said with a sigh. “Now I’m gonna wanna do it all the time.”

Mart gave him a little shove. “Jerk.”

“You’re the jerk. Who knew you were such a good kisser?”

“It’s a short list,” Mart said.

“Good.”

And then they were kissing again, and there might’ve been a little groping, and Mart could easily imagine doing more. So much more. Things he’d only ever seen online in the middle of the night right before he cleared his browser history.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Dan said.

Mart leaned against him, breathing in the scent of leather and whatever cologne it was that Dan wore that smelled so good. “How’d you know I’d want you to?”

“Let’s just say I’m very observant and leave it at that.”

Why did Mart get the feeling Di had meddled, even after he’d asked her not to?

A group of guys suddenly went running by in the main hallway, hooting and hollering, and Mart froze until he was sure they hadn’t been seen. Dan gave him one last kiss, just a chaste peck on the lips, before he moved back and put space between them again.

“I won’t out you,” he said. “But when you’re ready, I’ll be there. For moral support.”

There was no reason that should’ve brought tears to Mart’s eyes, but he hastily blinked them back into submission. “Thanks.”

They walked back to the gym together, close enough to bump shoulders and arms.

“You think we’ll all still be friends, after?” Dan asked.

After graduation, he meant, and Mart would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about the same thing. 

“I hope so,” he replied honestly. “After everything we’ve been through it would be untenable not to be friends.”

They bumped hands, just for a second, and Mart felt another full-body flush. How the heck was he supposed to hide his feelings from everyone now? He wished he could just kiss Dan right there in the middle of school and not care who saw or what they might say.

Dan rubbed the back of his neck, and Mart had been friends with him long enough to recognize that as a sign of nerves. 

“You know, our schools are only three hours apart. We could visit sometimes.”

Mart tried hard not to smile, even though it felt like his whole body was straining with the effort. Even if they had to keep things a secret for the remainder of high school, Dan still wanted to be with him after graduation. That meant a lot. And three hours wasn’t much of a drive, not for a weekend visit.

“Yeah. That, uh. That sounds like a plan.” Mart wished he didn’t sound like such an idiot.

They were almost back at the gym when Dan suddenly diverted, pulling Mart into Coach Cabelo’s office and locking the door behind them. The music was only a little muffled in there. Unfortunately, the smell of old sweat socks was at full potency.

“What are we doing in here? It reeks,” Mart complained. It was also really dark, since the office had no windows.

“They’re playing our song,” Dan replied, sweeping Mart into his arms.

“I wasn’t aware we had one,” Mart said. Not that he was complaining. “Who knew you were such a romantic sap?”

“It’s a short list.”

Mart laughed. The song wasn’t really meant for slow dancing, but he wasn’t going to argue about being that close to Dan. Not when there was more kissing.

It was the best night of his life. 

_Well, he walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to dance_  
_He looked kinda nice and so I said I might take a chance_  
_When he danced he held me tight_  
_And when he walked me home that night_  
_All the stars were shining bright_  
_And then he kissed me_

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** I do so love a high school fic! And I thought it would be fun to set this story in modern times but give a callback to the era evoked by the books (some of which were written in the 1950s).
> 
> Thanks so much to Spikedluv for the inspiring prompt, and for letting me know about this challenge!
> 
> **Song List**
> 
> [Runaround Sue, Dion and the Belmonts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NQLmUOgT5M)  
> [At the Hop, Danny & the Juniors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6EeObPCMR8)  
> [Where the Boys Are, Connie Francis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqgl0VRJW0E)  
> [Teenager in Love, Dion and the Belmonts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs037jwD3_A)  
> [Then He Kissed Me, The Crystals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE_jOD2Fxvs)


End file.
